Article here. Excerpt:

'Gender equality expert and university lecturer Anna Borg has argued that gender quotas for MPs aren’t insulting to women and that the power of political incumbency makes them necessary.

Borg wrote a status following last night’s debate on L-Erbgħa Fost il-Ġimgħa, in which family lawyer Nickie Vella de Fremeaux and Chamber of SMEs CEO Abigail Mamo warned the proposed quotas risk sending out the message that women and men aren’t equal.

“Yet nobody batted an eye lid when Joseph Muscat, Adrian Delia, Clyde Caruana, Bernard Grech , Miriam Dalli and most recently Oliver Scicluna found themselves in the national parliament without ever standing for a national election.”

Borg warned that the power of incumbency makes it extremely tough for women to get elected to Parliament, seeing the vast majority of sitting MPs are men.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The City Council in 2020 did not hold nearly as many work sessions as usual, but in December it held a work session to discuss the importance of the boards and commissions appointed by the City Council being not only geographically diverse but also making appointments with consideration of race and gender diversity.

Recent appointments have been made only after a discussion of whether the race and gender of the proposed appointee would further that goal, and it was discovered that Councilmember Sharon Hightower had to give her approval regarding race and gender before an appointment could be made by a fellow councilmember.

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'Former Wisconsin wide receiver Quintez Cephus said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the university that he was used as a scapegoat during a sexual assault investigation that resulted in his temporary expulsion.

Cephus seeks unspecified damages in his lawsuit filed in federal court in Madison, accusing the defendants of violating his due process rights, violating Title IX provisions and breach of contract.

Cephus was suspended from the Badgers football team in August 2018 and was expelled from the University of Wisconsin-Madison for violating its nonacademic misconduct code as part of a Title IX investigation following his arrest on second- and third-degree sexual assault charges.

After a jury acquitted Cephus, he was reinstated and led Wisconsin in receiving during the 2019 season as the Badgers went 10-4 and reached the Rose Bowl. Cephus recently completed his rookie season with the Detroit Lions, who took him in the fifth round of the 2020 draft.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The newest federal guidance for colleges and universities investigating sexual misconduct emphasizes due process for both the accuser and accused. Among other requirements, institutions are legally obligated to presume the accused is innocent prior to starting any investigation.

That’s not what happened at Pacific University in Oregon, where one professor of education who made controversial comments about gender says he was told to quit or be found culpable in an investigation under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law prohibiting gender-based discrimination.
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The Pacific story isn’t so much about what the professor, Richard Paxton, said or didn’t say. Even the interim chair of the campus’s American Association of University Professors chapter condemns some of his reported comments. Instead, it’s about what happens when an institution allegedly uses Title IX as a cudgel to get inconvenient professors to go away.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Misogyny. We know that word so well. We live in a misogynistic world. Women are hated, and we women hate being hated, yet — we still live with it. We still allow it. We still only fight it half way, and it's hard to successfully fight fire with fear and obeisance.

And then there's misandry.

What is misandry? By definition: hatred, dislike, or mistrust of men.

Misandry is not the opposite of misogyny. It is not an inborn trait; women do not hate men without reason, as some men (not all) seem to hate and disrespect women unnecessarily, as if its a birth rite. Let's call it a privilege.

Misandry is what happens when a woman decides that she wants to heal from a lifetime of male abuse. She didn't ask for the abuse, nor did she ask to take on the hatred needed in order to combat it, but she does needs to take her power back, and she does NOT need to be polite while doing so.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'More men than women lost their jobs in the past year according to data from the Department of Labor Statistics, but there’s no denying the pandemic’s impact on the economy has taken its toll on men, women, and families (Fig. 1). Vice President Harris addressed the “pandemic [that] has touched every part of our lives. Families everywhere are shouldering a huge burden as homes have become classrooms and child-care centers, and uncertainty plagues each day,” she said in a Washington Post editorial on February 12.

Article here. Excerpt:

'If you want to help women achieve gender equality in the workplace, it’s time to give more support to men.

That may sound counterintuitive since men have long been advantaged at work with higher salaries, faster promotions and more authority.

We are two professors who study gender equality and injustices in the workplace. One of us reviewed 186 published papers on gender equality in the last decade. Our conclusion: One of the biggest problems in contemporary policies aimed at gender equality in the workplace is that they leave out men.

For many women with young children, taking on more responsibilities at work means their responsibilities at home need to decrease. And for that to happen, men need to step up – and be encouraged to do so. Here are three ways companies could do just that.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rape, kidnapping and assault charges filed against a 22-year-old Kirkland man were recently dropped by King County prosecutors after a Kirkland police detective found evidence on the man’s cellphone that led investigators to believe his sexual encounter with an 18-year-old Tacoma woman was consensual.

The case was covered by media outlets including The Seattle Times following Thomas Brownlee’s arrest on Aug. 30.

The charges were dismissed Jan. 12 based on electronic communications between Brownlee and the woman, according to court records and Senior Deputy Prosecutor Emily Petersen.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Sperm counts in Western countries have dropped by more than 50 percent since the 1970s. At the same time, men’s problems with conceiving are going up: Erectile dysfunction is increasing and testosterone levels are declining by 1 percent each year.

“The current state of reproductive affairs can’t continue much longer without threatening human survival,” warns Mount Sinai fertility scientist Dr. Shanna Swan in her book, “Count Down” (Scribner), out Tuesday. “It’s a global existential crisis.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki raised eyebrows on Tuesday when she responded to a question from a small business owner about what the Biden administration was doing to their small business during the pandemic by saying in part that Biden tapped a woman to lead the Small Business Administration.
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Psaki’s comments failed to take into account that President Donald Trump had already selected a woman to run the Small Business Administration as Jovita Carranza served as the 26th Administrator of the SBA.
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Psaki made similar remarks late last month when she was asked about what the Biden administration was doing in response to volatility in the stock market.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The researchers analyzed the success of 175 countries in containing COVID-19 using data from Our World in Data, the World Bank, Freedom House, and the World Health Organization. After controlling for factors such as GDP per capita and percent of the population over age 65, they found no evidence that countries led by women tended to have less COVID-19 fatalities than countries led by men.

“The perception that women world leaders have done better vis-a-vis COVID-19 cases and deaths largely comes from the fact that other researchers and the media have focused primarily on OECD countries, whereas we looked at the entire global sample of countries,” Windsor told PsyPost. “The cases people tended to focus on were New Zealand and Iceland — two remote island nations with relatively small populations, where borders are easy to control.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Every new president vows to heal the very divide his party and opponents have spent the last year and billions of dollars magnifying. Invariably, the plea translates into "unify by agreeing with me."

One of President Joe Biden's first policies appeared to bridge the gender divide by creating a White House Gender Policy Council. As someone who served on the Board of the National Organization for Women in New York City, I have seen enormous progress in women's issues, and a need for more.

Simultaneously, for a half century, millions of parents of boys and I have witnessed an ever-growing boy crisis. We see it hurting not only boys, but the fathers they may become, and our daughters who seek future young men worthy of their love.

By creating a council for "gender policy" rather than a council for "women," Biden seemed to be heeding the warning embodied in Betty Friedan's The Second Stage: The liberation of women will plateau if attention to men's issues does not follow.

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Army could adjust how it scores its new Combat Fitness Test to account for the “biological differences” between men and women, a service spokeswoman said Friday.

The reevaluation of the ACFT comes weeks after Congress delayed its implementation over concerns the new test created an unfair disadvantage to female soldiers.

Army leaders are now looking at ways to apply scoring based on gender for the six-event, CrossFit-inspired fitness test, said Lt. Col. Peggy Kageleiry, a spokeswoman for the Army’s Center for Initial Military Training, which has led the ACFT’s development. The test was designed as a gender- and age-neutral fitness evaluation meant to simulate strength and conditioning challenges faced by soldiers in combat.

“We are addressing these concerns in coordination with Army senior leaders, Congress, and with those it impacts the most, our American soldiers,” Kageleiry said.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Ten retired general and flag officers, including the former director of the National Security Agency, have filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting expansion of draft registration to include women.

Retired Air Force Gen. Mike Hayden, former director of the National Security Administration; Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal; Army Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy and others filed a "friend of the court," or amicus, brief Wednesday supporting a case brought against the government by the National Coalition For Men, a group challenging the constitutionality of the Selective Service System's male-only registration restriction.
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The case -- National Coalition For Men, James Lesmeister and Anthony Davis v. Selective Service System and Donald Benton -- began as a lawsuit in 2013 by Lesmeister, later joined by Davis and the San Diego-based men's organization.

Article here. Excerpt:

'"Through regulatory guidance, Biden will require all administrators and staff who participate in a Title IX investigative process or may interact with a survivor at any point in the reporting process to participate in training on victim-centered, trauma-informed interview techniques. He will also require staff who develop prevention education programs or may interact with a survivor at any point in the reporting process to undergo training on the role of technology in sexual violence, dating violence, stalking, and harassment, an emerging challenge that is too often insufficiently understood."